


Dry As A Bone

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: A meditation on addiction and the nature of love, Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Codependency, Disguised as a simple story about Harvey handcuffing Jim to Jim's bed, Dubious Consent, Light Bondage, M/M, Sobriety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 13:58:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13191534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: What makes the desert beautiful is that, somewhere, it hides a well.





	Dry As A Bone

**Author's Note:**

> The quote in the summary is by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  
> While Jim is ultimately into it, the whole scenario is... questionable, so if you think that this story may bother you, please don't read it, Dear Reader.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

Once, a long, long time ago, Harvey went to A.A.. It was the worst fifteen minutes of his life. A.A. had to be working for someone- and looking at the faces of some of the people there, shining with the kind of blank optimism that can only come after hard, grinding desperation- it was working for a lot of people, but Harvey could already tell that it wasn’t going to work for him. He asked the woman sitting next to him where the bathrooms were, and it was like he’d snatched her out of religious ecstasy. Her expression collapsed from open and joyous into pinched. She was back on earth. And she had to be hating Harvey for putting her there. Outside and to the left, she hissed. Just to spite her, just to spite everyone and everything, including himself, in the bathroom, he took a drink from the bottle in his coat pocket. Then, he walked out of the church or community center or whatever it was, and never returned.  
The one thing that he does believe, though, out of that stew of things that are supposed to help you but just made him feel tired, weighted down, is that an addict is an addict forever. If you stop drinking, you’re still an alcoholic. You’re just a different kind. That’s fine with Harvey. It’s something in him, like his heart or his blood. He can’t stop his blood from flowing, or his heart from pumping. Well, he could, but it’s not really worth the trouble.  
He begins to think that drinking was just a distraction. Maybe the real problem is that he’s just fucked-up, that he was always fucked-up. If he was drinking, he could blame the booze, or just not feel all of the fucked-up things he was feeling. Now, it’s just him and his fucked-up self. When he can’t sleep, there’s nothing he can depend on, to shove him into oblivion. It occurs to him that he could just start drinking again, but now that he’s stopped, it’s like a spell has been broken, or something. The thought of drinking does nothing for him. All of the emotions that used to cling to it- the relief; the desire; the shame; the comfort; the feeling of finding and knowing himself- have been sloughed off. He’s too old to become a junkie. That occurred to him, too, and it just seems… boring. There’s nothing for him to do, then, but lie in bed, and not sleep. He’s not up all night anymore wanting something or recovering from something, and he can’t remember how he used to sleep, before all of that. He can’t remember how his body worked. Maybe, he’ll just never sleep again.  
But it’s need that makes him who he is. It was always going to creep back, somehow. When it does, it’s horrible. It’s horrifying. It’s glorious. When he can’t sleep, he lies in bed, and thinks about Jim.  
At first, it’s just a shapeless unpleasant feeling, gnawing at him. Then, the knot separates itself. Harvey’s angry. He feels bad for himself. He hates Jim. He regrets everything that he did. He thinks of what he could have done differently. It wasn’t fair. It was a rigged game. He’s never had the chances that he should have had. He did everything that he was supposed to do. He sold his soul, several times over. When there was nothing left for him to sell, they started to throw his soul back at him. They didn’t want it anymore. He didn’t want it anymore. He was so ashamed of himself. He touches his throat.  
After the initial flash, he finds that he can’t hate Jim anymore. He’s still angry, he’s still disgusted, but hatred, real, steaming, obliterating hatred, slips out of him. Jim did what a hundred cops before him have done. The only difference is that Jim once pretended to give a shit about right and wrong. Maybe, somehow, he still does. Maybe, Jim’s lying awake, full of horrors that he can’t shut off, unable to sleep. The only difference between Jim and Harvey, then, is that Jim’s the one chained to that desk. Jim’s the one who has to get up at ass o’clock in the morning, after a sleepless night, walk and talk and function. It doesn’t matter if Harvey stays up all night hating himself, because his day starts when he wants it to. Harvey’s his own boss, now.  
“I’m even sleeping with the boss,” Harvey mutters, turning onto his side, smiling against the pillow, because it feels good to do it.  
It almost comes as a shock to Harvey to realize that he can do whatever he wants to, now.

Pity’s a step down from hatred. If you hate someone, somewhere, in your rotten, clammy soul, you also respect them. If you pity them, though-- Well, you pity a dead animal by the side of the road. You pity the winos you wake up, and warn away from the doorsteps. You pity cops who get shot in the street, because they weren’t quick enough on the draw, or didn’t want to wait for back-up. You pity all of the creatures you convince yourself are stupider than you are. If you wish it hard enough, maybe it’ll be true, and you won’t end up like them.  
Is it really pity, though? Harvey’s already been where Jim is. He was there, and he might have been pushed out, but he still left. However difficult it might be to sleep, Harvey still hasn’t gone back to the precinct, to spit in Jim’s face, or to rub salt in his own wounds, or to put anything else anywhere it doesn’t belong. If Jim saw a way out, however painful and humiliating, would he be able to take it?  
Of course not. The man’s the personification of the expression ‘shit, or get off the pot’. You could measure your life by Jim’s fits of wanderlust and their reflection, his mad dashes back home. Jim will stray, he might even convince himself that he’s gone for good, but he always comes back. If he stops dancing to Falcone’s tune, and she finds herself a new stooge, Jim will still find his way back. He’ll sell his soul for the privilege. The more it disgusts him, the more he’ll need it. Maybe, Jim should try A.A.. He might learn something about himself. But would he ever recover?  
Harvey’s bitter, but it’s not all bitterness. You can convince yourself that it was never good, but part of you remembers. It’s like muscle memory. If someone loved you, once, you don’t let go of it. You can’t let go of them, even when they hurt you. For a long time, it was that way with liquor. Once, Harvey woke up with his nose cracked against the bathroom floor. There was a rude-looking crust of black-red blood under his nostril, and he could feel the swelling before he saw it. When the doctor in the emergency room, a kid so young that Harvey wanted to smack him, narrowed his eyes and asked how it happened, Harvey said that a suspect elbowed him in the nose, and Harvey thought it was fine until he woke up the next morning and couldn’t breathe through it. It’s broken, the doctor said, no expression on his face. Well, I could have guessed that, Harvey barked, distorted and bleeding and ugly, and the doctor took a step back. Harvey couldn’t drink while he was on the medication they gave him- he still cared enough to follow doctor’s orders- and he thought that that was that. It was over. He didn’t have to do it anymore. For a while, he didn’t. Then, he was assigned a case he could tell from the beginning was going to be bad, like the file gave off fumes, or something, and Dix was long gone, and Jim was probably still sharpening pencils in the academy, so Harvey was all by him-fucking-self. Some things, you just can’t do by yourself. You need someone, but your need doesn’t matter, because there’s no one to ask to help you, or even just to be there with you, while you do your fucking duty, and shit. Liquor was never going to leave him. It welcomed him back. He was grateful. He can’t remember only the bad things that happened between Jim and himself. That was such a small part of it. For a long time, it was it good. It was-  
God.  
God damn it.  
Harvey’s suddenly struck by the memory of that woman in A.A., how she looked, listening to someone else talk about their year of sobriety, and how important it was to them, and how they understood, now, that they were helpless, and they’d rather be helpless before God than helpless before the bottle-  
For Christ’s sake. Jim Gordon was not his higher fucking power.  
Harvey rolls over in bed, buries his face in the pillow, puts his hand behind his head.  
That’s fucking sick. It’d be better if it were some sex thing.  
Just some sex thing.  
You thought about it. It wasn’t weird. He’d thought about Dix, and that was way weirder. If you were with someone that much, and you had to depend on them to keep you alive, it was like your body trained your mind to be in love with them. You could tell yourself that it was just the job, but it stopped being a job the second you started actually doing it. Then, it was your fucking life, and it was you and this virtual stranger working together to save your life even as you risked it. After that, they couldn’t be such a stranger anymore. No matter how much you talked or didn’t, even if you never saw each other away from work, you knew each other, now, in a way that no one else could know anyone. Sort of made sex seem redundant. It wasn’t just Harvey’s life that Jim was going to save, though. He was out to save Harvey’s soul, whether Harvey liked it or not. Something about Jim gave Harvey the impression that it was better for Jim if Harvey didn’t like it.  
It makes a person angry, when all of that goes bad. It makes a person hungry, too, because they were used to something, and they can’t have it anymore. That’s what hunger is: something missing that should be there. The person you felt all of those things for might be gone, but the feelings don’t go away. You can try to ignore them, Harvey supposes, you can wait for them to fade away--  
But what’s the fucking fun of that.  
If he can’t sleep, he’s going to do something with the night, with all of those dark and silent hours. There’s no better time for this. Some things can only happen at night, when you can’t see that well, and your other senses are outsize, and your mind works differently because it expects to be sleeping, dreaming. Harvey gets out of bed. It’s not even that late. It’s solidly night, but there’s still a lot of night left. There’s a long time to go before the night evaporates, and you’re left with daylight and all of those dry, parched hours to wait until it’s night again, and you have another chance.  
Another chance to do what?  
To get dressed, and drive across town to Jim’s building. To park his car across the street. To look for a long moment into what he imagines is Jim’s bedroom window. It’s dark. If Jim has company, Harvey will just pretend to be drunk, to have wandered in from God knows where, forgetting that he’s supposed to hate Jim, forgetting that this isn’t his house. All of those years of practice will finally be good for something. The lock is looser than a diarrheic bowel. It opens without complaint or warning. Jim has to have forgotten that he gave Harvey his key. Not that there was a good time to ask for it back, between pushing Harvey out of his own office and inviting him to start again, working under Jim. The anger comes back, but it’s cold, now, dark and sharp. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Or, anyway, the pain is no longer unwelcome.  
Harvey creeps through the hallways, to Jim’s bedroom. Jim’s sleeping with the door open, the sheets only pulled halfway up his bare chest. Under the sheets, he could be naked. For a moment, Harvey stands in the doorway, and just looks at him. Even in the dark, Harvey can read the expression on Jim’s face. He looks- not angry, not troubled or anxious, but merely bothered. He looks annoyed. All of that, and the most that anyone is going to get out of Jim is a look of vague irritation.  
Harvey can be very quiet when he has to. He knows how to sort of hold himself in, so that he can touch someone without them feeling it. He knows how to breathe so that it neither makes a sound nor disturbs the air. By the time Jim stirs, realizes that something isn’t right, wakes completely, his hands are already cuffed to the headboard.  
“Who’s there?” he shouts.  
Harvey turns on the lamp. Jim winces. When he tries to cover his eyes with his hand, he grasps the situation. He’s scared, and then he’s angry, but then, he’s neither of those, because it’s just Harvey standing over him. He knows Harvey. He knows that he has nothing to fear.  
“Jim,” Harvey says, like this is a casual and unexpected meeting.  
“What the hell are you doing?”  
“I couldn’t sleep,” Harvey says, because it’s the truth.  
“What are you doing?” Jim repeats, slowly.  
“I’m not quite sure, myself.”  
“Are you drunk?” Jim spits.  
“Are you?” Harvey counters.  
Jim looks down. “Are you going to kill me?” He sounds skeptical.  
“No. I probably should. People have died in Gotham for less.”  
Sneering, his voice rough: “Well, do it, then. And get it over with.”  
Harvey shakes his head. He’s surprised by how light he sounds, how gentle, how free. “I said that I’m not going to kill you.”  
“What do you want, then?”  
“I want…” Now, it’s difficult to put into words. If it was ever actually easy, even when Harvey was lying alone in his bed, thinking about this, thinking about what he really wanted. “I want to forgive you.”  
“Great,” Jim says, rolling his eyes, “Forgive me, then. Uncuff me. Get the fuck out of here.”  
“Is that what you want?”  
Jim’s expression changes, and for a second, he looks, almost--  
Scared.  
“I’ll uncuff you. You can call the cops if you want. Hell, I’ll call them for you.” Harvey fumbles in his pockets for the key. “Arrest me yourself,” he says, with a shrug.  
“I don’t want to arrest you,” Jim says, his voice now so soft that Harvey has to come closer to hear him. Jim swallows. “You want to forgive me?”  
“Yeah.” Harvey puts the key back in his pocket, just to see what Jim will say.  
But Jim only asks, “What do I have to do for you to forgive me?” He raises his head, defiantly, but more than that, inquisitively.  
“Nothing you don’t want to do. In fact, that’s the whole point. Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”  
Jim looks from side to side, as though someone could be listening to them. “How does that let you forgive me?”  
“You get to decide your own punishment,” he fixes his eyes on Jim’s.  
There. He does look scared, now. He shifts, as though trying to cover himself, but of course, he can’t. “This is sick, Harvey,” he says gently.  
“Maybe. Sure. Tell me to uncuff you.” Of course, Jim did, but somehow, Harvey knows that Jim has already forgotten. “You can drive me over to Arkham yourself.”  
“I don’t want to do that.”  
“What do you want?”  
Jim closes his eyes. “You want to hurt me?”  
“Maybe.”  
He opens his eyes. “What else do you want to do?”  
“I told you. That’s up to you. You’re going to have to become a better listener if you’re going to be captain of the GCPD.”  
Jim frowns. “Why are you doing this?”  
“Why shouldn’t I? Don’t you think you hurt me?”  
For a long time, Jim says nothing. “I didn’t know that this would happen.”  
“That might be true, but you didn’t do anything to stop it.”  
“We both know that you came back to work too soon.”  
“Maybe so.”  
“Something worse was going to happen if you had stayed captain.”  
“We’ll never know.”  
“Harvey...”  
“Yes, Jim?”  
Jim sighs. He closes his eyes again. He opens them again. “I can’t give you what you want.”  
“Tell me to uncuff you. Kick my ass. Throw me out into the street.”  
Jim shakes his head. “I don’t want to do that.”  
“Which part?”  
Jim looks as though he’s been struck. “What?”  
“Which part don’t you want to do? Kick my ass, or tell me to uncuff you?”  
“Harvey.”  
“Jim.”  
“This is ridiculous.”  
Harvey shrugs. “Probably.”  
“Just do whatever you’re going to do,” he says quietly.  
“It’s not me, Jim. It’s you. I won’t do anything that you don’t tell me to do.”  
Jim opens his mouth, but doesn’t speak. He looks at Harvey, angry- scared- trapped- annoyed- ashamed- anticipating- Finally, he says, “I can’t.”  
“It’s not difficult, Jim. If you ask most people what they deserve, they’ll probably lie, but I’m giving you a way out. You don’t have to tell me that; you just have to tell me what to do.”  
Jim makes a face. Disgusted. Ugly. Angry. Provocative. “Fuck me, then, if that’s what you came over here to do.”  
“If that’s what you want, I will.” Harvey takes off his coat, his jacket.  
The hardness in Jim’s expression isn’t anger, now, but absence. For a moment, he looks as though he feels absolutely nothing. When Harvey settles onto him, though, slowly, just a little of his weight at a time, Jim changes. His face softens, as though in relief. He lets his head fall back. Slowly, tentatively, he moves to accommodate Harvey, so that their bodies can fit together. He spreads his legs. He looks up at Harvey. Harvey watches the line of his throat as he swallows. Jim closes his eyes. He opens them. His lips part. His tongue glides over his lower lip. The breath that escapes him is the uneasy step on an uneven path. “Harvey,” he says.  
“Tell me to stop,” Harvey says.  
Jim closes his eyes, breathes in sharply through his nose. “Kiss me.”  
He almost expects Jim to bite him, but Jim doesn’t. It’s soft, and deep, and hot, and Jim leans up into him, his back arching off of the bed. When Harvey pulls away, Jim is breathing heavily, his throat flushed. Jim tells him to do it again, and Harvey does, runs his hand down Jim’s body, under the sheets.  
“This is what you want?” Jim asks.  
“It’s not about me,” Harvey says.  
“It feels like it is.”  
“You want me to stop, I’ll stop.”  
Again, Jim looks stricken. He frowns. “Pull back the sheets,” he says in a hard voice.  
Harvey does.  
“Take off my underwear.”  
Harvey does that, too.  
“Suck my dick.”  
Harvey kisses his mouth, making Jim exhale in surprise. He moves his hand over Jim’s belly, feels the muscles contract under his hand. He wraps his hand around Jim’s cock, touches him while he keeps kissing him. He kisses Jim’s neck, moves down. Holds Jim’s hips down, and kisses the soft skin of his thighs. Keeps his hand on Jim’s cock as he sucks; shallow, then deep.  
“Stop,” Jim says, first wavering, then steady: “Stop.”  
He moves away, and looks at Jim.  
“Stop,” Jim says again quietly, unnecessarily.  
Harvey sits down at the edge of the bed.  
Jim closes his eyes, turns his head to the side. Harvey watches Jim’s chest rise and fall. “I don’t want-” Jim says, then, “I want-”  
Harvey says nothing; just keeps watching him. It doesn’t work if he pushes, if he tries to lead Jim. If he gives Jim anyplace to go, anything that looks like a way out.  
Looking away, Jim tells Harvey to take off his clothes.  
He doesn’t look to see if Jim is watching him.  
“Come here,” Jim says.  
Harvey settles on top of him again, pulls the sheets down over them. Again, Jim shifts around him, fits himself against Harvey. He moves his hips against Harvey’s, and Harvey lets him do that for a while. Lets himself enjoy it, forget about whatever it is he’s supposed to be doing. Maybe this is all Harvey gets. Of his revenge, or whatever this is supposed to be. Maybe all that’s left for him is all that he started out with: Jim’s going to make him feel whatever Jim wants him to feel, and Harvey can’t do a fucking thing about it. Doesn’t even want to. Maybe that’s not so bad.  
“I can’t,” Jim says softly, and Harvey looks down at him. It’s not a complaint or an apology; it’s delivered as a fact.  
“That makes two of us,” Harvey says.  
“Just kiss me,” Jim says.  
Harvey does, gently, slowly. He lets Jim feel him again. He touches Jim’s face, his neck, his chest.  
“I know you want me,” Jim says. Harvey says nothing. He kisses Jim’s neck, holds his hand over Jim’s heart. “You have to admit that,” Jim says.  
“Sure,” Harvey says.  
Jim tells him to stop, to get off of him, and Harvey does. He covers Jim with the sheets, gets up, gets into bed next to him.  
“Why are you doing this?” Jim asks.  
“I told you that. If you don’t like it, tell me to uncuff you. I’ll have to do it soon, anyway. This is bad for your circulation.”  
“I’m not-” Jim begins, and frowns.  
“Who is?”  
“What I was going to say is that I’m not sorry for anything I’ve done.”  
“Yeah,” Harvey says, “Who is?”  
“I’m not doing this because I think I deserve to be punished.”  
“So, you must just like it.”  
“So what if I do?” Jim snaps.  
“I’m not complaining.”  
“I don’t- I don’t like being handcuffed to my bed.”  
“Tell me to uncuff you.”  
“It’s not what I usually do,” Jim says, softly.  
“Variety’s the spice of life.”  
“Don’t pretend that you don’t want this.”  
He turns onto his side, looks at Jim. “Who’s pretending? I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t into it.”  
“Tell me,” Jim says, in his hard voice.  
“I want you, Jim.”  
“Tell me what you want to do.”  
“I want to do whatever you tell me to do.”  
Looking at the ceiling, Jim laughs. “Jesus Christ. Just… uncuff me, Harvey. Jesus Christ.”  
He gets out of bed, finds the key. The key’s touching the lock when Jim tells him to stop. He puts the key on the bedside table.  
“Just do it, Harvey.”  
“Do what?”  
“Fuck me.”  
“Okay.”  
“Fuck you, Harvey. Do it like you want to do it, not how you think I want you to do it.”  
He stands back, looks at Jim. “A young, unattached bachelor like you must have condoms around here someplace.”  
“Fuck you,” Jim says, then nods toward the bedside table.  
Harvey opens the drawer, takes out a condom and the lube. He looks at Jim again. “I think I’m going to uncuff you, anyway. Like I said, this is bad for your circulation.”  
Jim closes his eyes. “Don’t.”  
He pinches the tips of Jim’s fingers between his. “You feel that?”  
“Yes,” Jim says irritably.  
“Fine.”  
“Do it.”  
“You said to do it the way that I wanted to. I want to take my time.”  
Jim opens his eyes. He says nothing. As Harvey gets back on top of him, he remains silent. Harvey kisses him, and he kisses back. Harvey touches him, and he reacts.  
“Do it,” Jim whispers.  
Harvey keeps kissing him, touching him.  
“Please,” Jim says, his voice hollow.  
Harvey looks down at him. “Say it again.”  
Making a face, Jim closes his eyes, turns his head away.  
“Say it again,” Harvey says.  
Jim opens his eyes. “Please.”  
He gets up, repositions Jim, a pillow under his hips. “This is probably going to hurt,” Harvey warns.  
“I know what it’s like,” Jim says.  
“Well, aren’t you just full of surprises,” Harvey says, absently, lubricating his finger, “Tell me if you want me to stop.” As he eases his finger into Jim, he listens to Jim’s breathing, for any indication that Jim wants him to stop, whatever Jim might say. He feels Jim inside, begins to understand how he works. How Jim’s body works, anyway. The rest may never make sense. This, at least, is a matter of cause and effect. As Harvey tries different angles, he’s pleased to find that he’s able to read Jim’s responses. When he thinks Jim can take it, he adds another finger. He listens to the sounds that Jim makes, feels him move, imagines what Jim is feeling. Waits. Waits for Jim to tell him what to do.  
“Please.”  
He wipes his fingers clean. Stands next to the bed, and puts on the condom. He doesn’t have to look to know that Jim is watching him.  
He enters Jim slowly. Jim is breathing audibly, through his mouth; occasionally making a soft sound that could mean anything. Jim doesn’t clarify, and Harvey doesn’t ask. Everything that Harvey thought he knew suddenly no longer applies. This is something else, and it’s scary, and better for being scary. What he’s beginning to understand is that this is the way it always is with Jim: once Jim has decided that something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen, whether or not anyone likes it. Jim, included. Maybe, it doesn’t work for Jim unless he doesn’t like it. Then, he’s inside of Jim, his weight pressing down on Jim, and Jim exhales a breath that Harvey didn’t know that Jim was holding. He moves against Harvey, tightens around him. His breathing becomes fast and rough. His mouth is open. His eyes are closed. Harvey fucks him slowly, doesn’t let him have too much at once.  
“Harder,” Jim says.  
“That’s not what I want,” he says against Jim’s neck.  
“Yes, it is.”  
“Don’t tell me what I want.” Just for that, he stops, even though it almost hurts.  
“Stop trying to punish me,” Jim says, but it doesn’t come out the way that he must have wanted it to. He can’t have meant to sound like he understands, now, finally, something about Harvey, something about himself. He can’t have meant to sound like he finally knows. That they needed each other. That they still need each other.  
“That’s what I came here to do,” Harvey says, and he knows that he means it. It’s punishing Harvey, too, now, because this is just too good. It’s too good to stop it, to pretend that he doesn’t want it. Before, he could pretend. Now-- literally and figuratively, he’s in too deep.  
It’s mercy. Finally. “Please,” Jim says, and Harvey knows that Jim doesn’t care about how he sounds anymore.  
Harvey doesn’t say anything. Neither does Jim. He gives it to Jim. Probably hard enough to hurt him, but if Jim isn’t going to say anything, Harvey isn’t going to stop. Jim’s clenched around Harvey’s cock, moving against him, back arched, head turned to the side. He presses his face into Jim’s neck. Hears Jim make a sound as though he were stifling a gasp, then breathe out like he were hurt, then finally, moan, a defeated sound, his head falling back. The rest of the sounds that come out of him aren’t like anything in particular; meaningless, stupid sounds, like an involuntary cough. Harvey lets himself come. He doesn’t make a sound. He holds his breath. It’s easy to shove it all down into himself. That’s where he wants it, anyway. He doesn’t want to let any of it go.  
Still inside of Jim, he leans over, takes the key from the bedside table, unlocks the handcuffs. Jim’s arms fall down around him. He feels Jim’s muscles twitch against him, as he shakes blood and feeling back into his arms. Jim opens and closes his hands. He lets them lie on Harvey’s back. After a moment, Jim tells him to get up. Harvey goes to the bathroom, drops the condom into the toilet. He lies back down next to Jim. Then, Jim gets up, goes into the bathroom, and closes the door behind him. There’s a full length mirror on the back of the door. Harvey sits up, looks at his reflection. He stands, gets closer to it. He looks at himself. It’s strange, sometimes, to look at yourself. You’re aware that it’s you, but the more you look, the less you feel like the person you see.  
Fuck it, Harvey thinks, about nothing in particular. Yawning, he lets realization, then indifference, break over him:  
Whatever Jim wants- Harvey’s body, his fucking soul-- Jim is fucking welcome to it. The A.A. people had it right: some people just don’t know how to belong to themselves. Harvey turns around. He gets back into bed. The sheets are cool on his skin. He’s not ready to fall asleep yet, but he knows that he’ll sleep tonight. He closes his eyes. He waits for Jim to return. He listens to his own breathing. He waits.


End file.
